Is Halloween a Christian Festival.

Okay I know it's May, but a guy I'm interested in said he liked the carvings I've done on pumpkins but didn't like Halloween and seemed a bit defensive about it without prompting ("hopefully disagreeing over one day out of 365 won’t be too much of an issue!")

So I checked his profile and, I hadn't noticed that he had put "catholic" as his religion.

Given that Catholics generally believe in some really weird shit, I was curious to know what the issue was. So I googled it, and what I discovered was a lot of a) angst and b) apologetics.

Much of the modern aversion to Halloween, I think, stems from the same unwillingness to acknowledge the reality of evil. But there's a reason why we dress up as ghouls and goblins on the night before we celebrate the feast of All Saints Day, and, despite the claims of supposed Satanists and Wiccans and anti-Halloween Christians, it's actually a Christian reason: We believe in a world that extends beyond the one that we can see, a world in which angels and demons do contest for the souls of men, and the Prince of Lies grows in power by convincing people that he does not exist.

Occasionally we must push the "pause" button in our busy lives to consider our own mortality with all its spiritual and practical consequences. The Church gives us two feasts and the whole month of November to do this. Halloween is like our Mardi Gras before a very serious Lent. We should be able to laugh at the dark side and dress up in costumes and have parties. Let’s reclaim our heritage with all the story power, creativity and joyous good fun that we can. Let’s use it to help us become the saints we are each called to be.Halloween is a victory celebration, after all!

Angst:

Why Christians Reject the Occult:

"All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to "unveil" the future. Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone." (Catechism, #2116)

Good answer,
Many of the traditions assosciated with Samhain come from agricultural times where the busiest time of the year was the harvest and growing seasons. It was often not possible to grieve for the dead of the season so became tradition to celebrate the dead after the harvest.

This was also when food was prepared for storage through the winter and good use was made of animal remains which were burnt, hence the word bonfire (bone fire)